


The Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by lightsaroundyourvanity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:12:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaroundyourvanity/pseuds/lightsaroundyourvanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's first thirty years in the pit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

She was the first thing Dean recognized, strung up beside him on the rack.   
  
“Bela?” Dean asked, through bleeding lips.  
  
Her hair, once kept in immaculate waves, was snarled and matted with blood. She was hunched, sagging against her chains with the air of someone who had been robbed of the energy to fight, or been broken of it. Her skin was ragged, and her eyes worn, but when she looked up, startled and wary and instantly frightened, there was a spark of something behind that green stare that reminded him of the colossal pain in the ass she had been while living.   
  
Dean should have guessed he’d know everyone at the party in Hell.  
  
“Dean Winchester,” Bela croaked. Her voice sounded rough and torn. “Now I really must be in hell.”  
  
Dean sneered. It broke open a cut above his lip, which started to bleed sluggishly. It didn’t matter. Dean couldn’t imagine a world where his mouth wasn’t constantly flooded with the taste of old blood, not anymore. “Would’ve thought you’d find a way out of this. Cat burglar and all.”  
  
“Obviously not.” If her voice hadn’t been so thick with pain, Bela’s tone might have been dry. “You, too.”  
  
Dean’s chin dropped to his chest. Those last moments on Earth replayed in his head, over and over again, like some personal hell his brain had concocted because it didn’t think Dean was being tortured enough just being in the fiery pit. Fuck, for all he knew it was some kind of torture organized by Hell. The most unnerving part of the pit was its existence completely beyond mortal reality. Dean literally couldn’t imagine some of the tricks they might cook up for him, and that in itself was terrifying. Watching Sam watch him die, shredded to pieces by hellhounds, again and again in his mind, could very well be part of the standard gold package.  
  
Fear. Blood. Sam. These were all weapons that demons had loved to throw at Dean when he’d been alive. Now that they had the full run of Dean, he shouldn’t have been surprised that they turned to some old reliable favourites.  
  
Except he was, incredibly, every time, and a part of Dean wondered if it was that was purely because the demons wanted him to be. This was their playground: he was just a seesaw.  
  
With no warning, Dean’s skin began to blister with third degree burns. He roared, thrashed against his chains, spat curses at an invisible attacker. There was no reason for this, no schedule. Just the constant looming threats that were made good on more often than not.  
  
To his left, Bela was screaming, although Dean couldn’t tell if the burnt-hamburger smell filling their cage was from his skin or her own. A horrible mingling of both, he supposed.  
  
“Why?” Bela whimpered.  
  
“If you have to ask that still,” Dean got out through gritted teeth, “You’re not as smart as I thought you were.”  
  
+_+  
  
Sometimes Dean was strung up with Bela, sometimes strangers, sometimes spectres of those he hadn’t been able to save. Usually he was alone. That was when Alastair liked to talk to him, like a polite dentist making conversation as he jammed scary looking instruments down his patient’s throat.  
  
“You look lovely today, Dean,” Alastair joked as he peeled off a strip of skin from the side of Dean’s neck. “Did you put in effort for little old me?” He laughed long and hard at his own joke, a wheezing, oily sound that went with the searing pain in Dean’s neck.  
  
“Go to hell,” Dean rasped.  
  
“Oh, sweetheart, you’re starting to get forgetful on me,” Alastair tutted. “We’re already in Hell.” he put a sharp nail next to Dean’s eye, and Dean tried to cringe away from it, but he was frozen in place. “You know, I heard a rumour that when you lose one sense, the others go into overdrive,” Alastair said thoughtfully. “This is for your own good, Deano.”  
  
His nail sliced Dean’s eyeball neatly in two while it was still in the socket. Dean screamed as half his vision went black, thick, hot blood running down his cheek. He was still screaming when Alastair drove his thumb into Dean’s other eye, and everything went dark.  
  
And so it goes. Alastair carves, and Dean screams, and at the end of the day he puts down his tools and sits down next to Dean, his air friendly and conversational.  
  
“So how about it, Dean?” Alastair asked, for the thousandth time. “Ready to fuck with the eagles?”  
  
If Dean still had a tongue, he would spit blood at Alastair’s feet. As it is, he can only lie there, a raw and chewed up sack of meat, and gurgle at Alastair.  
  
“Oh, silly me,” Alastair treaded the line between playful and smarmy like nobody Dean had ever known. “Hard to strike a bargain without your teeth and throat.”   
  
Alastair snapped his fingers, and Dean was whole again. Dean gulped down air into his restored lungs, painfully, embarrassingly grateful to be able to do these basic functions again. He blinked his perfect eyes, wriggled his fingers and toes.  
  
“So what do you say, sailor?” Alastair prompted.  
  
“Screw you,” Dean snarled, and the teasing look dropped off of Alastair’s face. With a wave of his hand, Dean was thrown back in the bowels of the pit to roast.  
  
+_+  
  
On rare, blissful occasions, Dean would be left alone for a few hours. It was never a time to be truly at ease: a part of him would always be on edge, wondering if he was being lulled into a false sense of security to amplify the pain of some new and awful torment.   
  
It’s during those times that he and would Bela talk.  
  
“Should’ve saved you,” Dean mumbled, “I was a dick.”  
  
“I’m not disagreeing,” Bela replied. “But really, Dean. You couldn’t even save yourself.”  
  
A shiver ran down Dean’s spine, or maybe it was only the memory of the lash. “We’ll get out of here,” he told Bela, “Somehow.”  
  
Bela had no answer for that. Where could they even go? The entire dimension was designed to hurt them. It’s impossible, and she knew it. “Good luck with that,” she quipped.  
  
“I will,” Dean’s voice was the tiniest bit stronger when he said that. “My dad climbed out of the pit. There’s… there’s gotta be a way.”  
  
Bela would have rolled her eyes if she didn’t think it would irritate the migraine that had been plaguing her for more than a decade. “Heroes and legends,” she muttered instead.  
  
Dean’s answering cough was scraped. “Look around, sister. We’re smack in the middle of a legend.”  
  
If this was a legend, Bela thought, it was one of those Greek ones, twisted and cautionary and with everyone getting their livers pecked out by crows.  
  
Sometimes they talk about living. “Home” they like to call it, but it’s not, not really. The mortal word is for the living, and they are dead. They have no place. No place but Hell.  
  
“When we get out–” Dean has to struggle more and more every day to keep even a thread of positive reassurance to his tone “–when we get out, we’ll get back on the topside of earth, and track down Sammy. He’ll figure out how to get us where we’re supposed to be.”  
  
 _Where we’re supposed to be_. Didn’t they both sell their souls? Didn’t they both choose this destiny? Bela was disoriented and Bela was frightened, but in the pit of her belly she worried that this was where she was supposed to be. She didn’t want it; didn’t even think she deserved it, really. But there it was.  
  
“He never offers me that deal you know,” Bela said suddenly. “Alastair.”  
  
Dean tilted his head to one side. “Come again?”  
  
“When he asks you to get off the rack and take his place,” Bela clarified. “I know. Everybody knows about it. He never offers it to me, even when he takes me alone. Only you.”  
  
“He probably thinks you’ll say no,” said Dean, eyes trained on the ground. It was a swirling mess of festering muck he would be hard pressed to accurately describe. Bloody gravel and pungent, rotting mast–and pain. Always lots and lots of pain.  
  
“I don’t think so.” Bela’s words were bitter. “I think he knows I’d say yes.”  
  
+_+  
  
“I hear you made a new friend,” said Alastair. Today he was pulling out Dean’s fingernails, one by one, and flaying strips of skin to the bone when he peeled nail from flesh. “I think that’s sweet. Love in the trenches and all that.”  
  
Dean only grunted and did his best to avert his gaze from Alastair’s handiwork. He had learned long ago not to engage in conversation with Alastair. It only ever gave him more ammunition to work with.  
  
“She’s pretty, Dean,” Alastair said, playing the approving uncle. “And that accent– you should really hear how good it sounds when she begs. So melodious.”  
  
Dean didn’t want to think about what lengths Alastair went to in order to hear Bela beg melodiously. He could feel guilt gnawing at him, even though deep down he knew that this wasn’t his fault. Except that it was, in a way. He was supposed to save her. He was supposed to have gotten her out of Hell by now.  
  
Alastair ripped out another fingernail, and Dean bellowed.   
  
Alastair looked put out. “You, on the other hand, scream like a wounded ox. It’s very distracting. Keep your mouth shut, Dean, or I’ll have to stop playing nice.”  
  
Dean didn’t want to know what that would look like, either. He clenched his jaw, breath coming out in a long hiss when Alastair flayed another chunk of flesh from his hand. Four out of five fingers on his right hand were bloody stumps now; as were all of the fingers on his left.   
  
Alastair made the last nail a particularly painful one. He carved until it was only hanging onto Dean’s finger by a shred of skin, and then wiggled it back and forth like a loose tooth, sending shooting jolts of pain through Dean with every twist. He ground mulch from the floor into Dean’s skin until his open wounds were on fire from the sting of salt and dirt and inevitable infection. When Alastair finally ripped the nail off, Dean couldn’t hold back the scream that erupted from his throat, half out of pain, half out of relief that it was done with.  
  
Alastair sneered and slapped Dean across the face, hard enough for him to see stars. Dean’s head snapped to one side and cracked against the mildew-coated stone that he was tethered to.   
  
“You need to work on your listening skills, young man,” said Alastair. He pried open Dean’s mouth and shoved his hand inside, clenched his fist around Dean’s tongue and pulled hard, until he was tearing the muscle out of Dean’s throat with agonizing slowness. Dean wasn’t even bothering to hold back his screams now; muffled by Alastair’s fist, guttural as he lost control of his own tongue. He kept screaming long after Alastair had ripped out his tongue and thrown it onto the ground, where it landed with a wet, meaty slap, and kept screaming as blood ran over his chin and down his throat until he was choking on it and his screams turned into wet, gasping gags.    
  
“My offer still stands.” Alastair was speaking softly now, leaning in close to Dean’s ear. “Hop off the rack and start playing for my side. All you gotta say is ‘I do.’”  
  
Dean wanted to sob. He _was_ sobbing, tears trickling from the corners of his eyes as he made little _hng hng_ noises in the back of his ruined throat. On days like this, he would almost consider saying yes. He could be whole again for longer than a day. He could be free. He could be in control.  
  
“Heck, I’ll even sweeten the pot,” Alastair said slyly. “Call it a limited time offer. Say yes today, and I’ll let you fuck her. Whatever way you like.”  
  
Dean recoiled instantly. Any thought of the sweet oblivion that saying yes might afford him gave way in the face of cold rage. He could still be better than this. He was better than this. He wasn’t a demon, to get off on watching others squirm in pain. Not yet, anyway. Not ever.  
  
“Go fuck yourself,” Dean growled, or attempted to. Without a tongue, it came out garbled.   
  
Alastair sighed, and threw Dean back into the pit for the night.  
  
+_+  
  
Alastair took Bela apart in front of Dean.  
  
Dean wasn’t even sure who this particular torment was meant for: Bela or himself. Alastair’s barbs about love in the trenches stuck under his skin, and as Dean watched the torture master cut Bela’s smile grotesquely wide, his pulse hammered in an endless litany of _your fault your fault your fault_ , punctuated by Bela’s shrieks.  
  
“That’s my girl,” Alastair said as he cut Bela from the corner of her mouth to her ear. He glanced sidelong at Dean, strung up next to Bela, and smirked. “What did I tell you? Melodious.”  
  
Bela followed Alastair’s gaze and immediately her eyes locked with Dean’s, a question burning in their depths. Before Dean could answer or even divine what it was, Alastair grabbed Bela by the chin and jerked her head towards him again. “Making eyes at other boys already?” he asked, “I’m hurt. Really.”  
  
Bela mustered up enough nerve to spit a half-clotted mouthful of blood into Alastair’s face. Alastair recoiled, his expression contorting, but he quickly wiped the anger from his face. He took up a knife and buried it in Bela’s shoulder, a vicious, brutal stab that made Bela howl.  
  
“You know I abhor bad manners,” Alastair snarled.  
  
Dean felt his throat tighten. He knew with a sick feeling that this was his fault, that Bela was getting after school detention because he had been stupid enough to speak to her, because of Alastair’s bizarre obsession with finding new ways to make Dean break.  
  
And to have to watch Bela fight _back_ , and to suffer more for it, brought Dean closer to breaking then he would ever want to admit. He watched Bela, who was sobbing now as Alastair twisted the knife, her hands clenching and unclenching helplessly.   
  
She was close enough to touch, Dean realized.   
  
He reached over and took a firm hold of Bela’s hand, which she returned instantly, her grip so tight it crushed bone. It was a small act of defiance, Dean realized, and a pointless one, but seeing Bela spit blood (for him, whether she knew it or not) made him surge to do _something_.  
  
And for a pure, brilliant second, it was worth it. Bela held on to Dean’s hand for dear life (so to speak) and he saw her shoulders relax a little bit, her pain transmuting through her vice-like grip. He could give her this, Dean thought. At the very least, he could give her this.  
  
Then Alastair severed Bela’s hand from her wrist, and Dean felt her fingers grow slack and then stiffen around his own, and the wave of Bela’s anguished cry crashed around him. Blood sprayed from the stump of Bela’s arm and in an arc across Dean’s face.  
  
Alastair whirled on Dean, ignoring Bela, who was still shrieking. “Make all the friends you want, Dean,” he told him. “I gotta say, it just makes my job a whole lot more fun. Heck, if you last long enough, I might even be able to have the honour of bringing Sam onto the court. That would be… exquisite.”  
  
Dean felt himself go cold.  
  
+_+  
  
The next time Alastair visited Dean, he cut out his heart and fed it to him in delicate spoonfuls.  
  
“I thought it only fitting,” said Alastair. He dabbed at the edges of Dean’s lips with a white, scallop-edged napkin. Dean had just choked down another heavy spoonful. His heart tasted rich and heavy, and surprisingly palatable, which made his stomach turn. “After all,” Alastair continued, “I thought you deserved a taste of the main event, after all that foreplay.”  
  
Alastair’s spoon dug out another piece of Dean’s heart, the serrated edges cutting through the dense meat. Inexplicably, Dean felt the cut as though his heart still beat in his chest, and the pain was beyond excruciating, beyond torment.  
  
“This is only the beginning,” Alastair said thoughtfully. “You care about people, Dean. I admire that about you.” He carefully wiped blood from the corner of Dean’s mouth again. “I could find an awful lot to enjoy out of that. All of your friends will eventually come to Hell, you know that, right Dean? An hour of talking to you and well… they can’t help themselves but fall.”  
  
And wasn’t it the truth? Dean’s own father had been condemned to Hell because of him. And if Sam came to the pit, how much of it would because Dean had dragged him back into hunting? Dean choked down another swallow of his own heart.    
  
“Do you know how you can make it stop?” Alastair asked. He sounded pleasant, soothing. “Just say yes. Just say yes, Dean, and join me on the other side of the rack. I won’t touch anyone else important to you.” A slow smile spread across Alastair’s face. “Not until you want me to.”  
  
And he wanted to, oh, he wanted to. In a way, Dean thought he could save anybody he cared for this way. The dangling promise of leaving anybody under Dean’s protection alone… well, he’d be selfish not to consider it, right?  
  
But still Alastair’s words echoed in his head. _Until you want me to_.  
  
He wouldn’t… would he? Now that Dean had cracked open the gate, he couldn’t stop thinking of the possibilities that might be laid out before him. He could get off the rack. He could protect those he cared about. He could be in control for once, instead of feeling the helpless cut, cut, cut of Alastair, day after day, no matter what he might try to do differently.  
  
And he could protect Sam.   
  
It was that thought, of Sam, his Sammy, broken and helpless while Alastair fed Dean pieces of his brother’s heart, that finally did Dean in. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. A thousand years in Hell, and Dean knew that torturing Sam was something he would never succumb to.  
  
But Alastair would.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean said, barely a croak. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it. Just take me down.”  
  
 _And keep my brother safe._  
  
A look of pure triumph crossed Alastair’s features. “Don’t tease me, Dean,” he said. He jammed the jagged spoon into the centre of Dean’s heart, and Dean jerked and groaned, a broken, strangled noise. “My heart couldn’t take it. Yours certainly won’t.”  
  
“I’m not,” Dean insisted. “I’ll do anything you want. Take me off the rack, put a knife in my hand, and I’ll do it. I swear.”  
  
The glow that suffused Alastair’s face was rapturous. It filled Dean with dread. Not enough to change his mind; but enough to feel sick about it.  
  
“See you tomorrow,” Alastair said, and blackness wrapped around Dean, thick and oppressive and for once, blessedly painless.  
  
+_+  
  
Bela’s head snapped up when Dean entered the cage, heels clicking echoes on the ground. When she saw it was Dean, a wealth of emotion flickered across her face: Fear. Disbelief. Hope, painful and tenuous. It settled there, with an unexpected sting.  
  
“You…” Bela licked her chapped and peeling lips. “You didn’t…”  
  
In two long strides Dean was in front of Bela, cupping her cheek in one hand. She leaned into him, but the tightness of her jaw belied that she was still wary, still tense. That wasn’t what Dean wanted. He wanted her to feel safe. He wanted her to be safe, but since that wasn’t an option, he could at least carry the illusion to her. So Dean did the only thing he could think of: he took his hand from Bela’s face and kissed her instead.   
  
Bela made a small noise before her eyes shuttered closed and she kissed Dean back. Her lips were rough and scraped against his, newly restored by Alastair. Dean parted Bela’s mouth open with his own and tasted copper blood and ash, longing and desperation. Their tongues met, and Bela gasped against Dean.  
  
And for one shining moment, Dean was a hero again. He could slay dragons and break into dungeons and rescue damsels from Hell. He was one of the good guys. He let his eyes drift shut and savoured the moment, let his kiss grow hungrier as he stroked the curve of Bela’s waist.  
  
Bela broke away first. “How did you do it?” she asked breathlessly.  
  
Reality hit Dean like a bucket of icewater. How had he done it? He had given in, and given up. This was no great escape. No daring last gambit for salvation. This was his first day on the job.  
  
The knife appeared in Dean’s hand as soon as he thought about it. He shoved it into her gut and watched the hope flee from her face, replaced by terror and anguished comprehension.   
  
“I said yes,” Dean growled. He twisted the blade, and Bela screamed.


End file.
